After about 20hrs, I couldn't take it anymore. I popped open the console, increased my carry weight, added a bil creds, set my level to 666, and finally, tgm. Let chaos reign, baby.

I had already added a couple UI mods (because Bethesda still ships UI components at 30fps for whatever reason) and patched the achievement disablement function, so now I feel like I can actually kinda enjoy the game (when I'm not in a loading screen).

I've put another 20hrs in playing like this, and have zero regrets. It makes my time in the game feel arcade-like, in a good, nostalgic way. I went from being stressed out and annoyed, to relaxed and able to laugh at the endless jank that we've all come to expect from Bethesda. It's like GTA back in the day... if you weren't using cheat codes, you were straight up missing out on the fun.

All that said, overall the game does feel like Bethesda threw Fallout, Skyrim, and No Man's Sky in a blender and then ran it all through a sieve to ensure that only the worst parts made it into the final release. I'm actually shocked by how much they seem to have outright copied elements from NMS (from UI, to gameplay mechanics, to storyline elements). I've got hundreds of hours in NMS spread across the last 5ish yrs, and I can't help but feel kinda greasy when I play Starfield because of how much appears to be straught up lifted from NMS.

Ultimately, Starfield is a new(ish) experience and fun to fuck around in, but if I want to explore space, I'll go boot up NMS.

It definitely feels "meh".

The characters are flat and tropey, the story itself isn't very compelling, there doesn't seem to be a lot of narrative freedom in the quests and the quests themselves are fairly cookie cutter. I was told the "First Contact" quest was really cool and well done. Nonsense! I'd like to be able to go back and talk to the NPCs about the progress of the quest, take their temperature on the options available. It didn't feel like there was much of a point in getting the opinions of the entities aboard the ship as they had zero say in the outcome.

The game feels very much like a fantasy setting wrapped in sci-fi aesthetics, especially with the way the main quest doles out powers.

I like building a ship. I wish the ship had more functionality. I like building outposts, though I have no idea what for, I can't see much of a use for harvesting and automating the production of resources.

The gun combat feels alright, but it seems health scales up really quickly on enemies.

I dislike how so much content is gated behind perk level ups, but it does keep me playing to see if the next unlock is cool.

I'm feeling the same way. Starfield isn't a bad game, but it's very meh. I enjoy the ship building aspect, but otherwise nothing really grabs me with this game.

Combat is a good example, too. There just doesn't feel to be any impact to the weapons. Mobs just get shot but don't really react to it. I know they will flee at times which is nice, but close range SMG fire to ones torso should illicit more of a response.

Fast travel also seems to be an detractor. Being able to fast travel anywhere you've been even if that place is across the galaxy really removes a lot of the exploration vibe the game would have otherwise. I know this isn't a space sim, but a lot of the systems they have don't really mesh well with others.

Starfield is like mediocre lite-RPG / space sim crossover that doesn't do either very well.

Edit: I also want to point out that Bethesda did not come up with the "NASA-punk" aesthetic, either. I've seen articles about that. The Expanse has been doing that for years now. Even before that, I can think of at least two Matt Damon movies from 2015 and before that used it as it's setting. Point being it's not anything new.

Most low level enemies drop weapons that only deal between 3 - 11 damage, which are basically useless against anything higher than level 5. I found some higher level weapons in a shop that dealt 30 - 40 damage and found they made combat much more fun.

As I progressed however, I noticed that enemy levels in a location were distributed:

• 4-5 low level
• 10-15 med level
• 1-5 high level

So there is still a problem with bullet sponges. I keep an overpowered shotgun (med damage, high rate of fire, explosions on crit) with me and just bum rush the high level enemies with that. Otherwise you’d be shooting them all day with your 40 damage rifle.

As you go on, those high level enemies drop weapons that do more damage, so there is progression…. But you also just encounter higher level enemies with more health so the problem continues.

I see that there are already combat rebalance mods on nexus, the kind I’ve used on Fallout games in the past, and I’ll probably install one of those when I decide to start a new play through. (Which, I definitely will. I’m enjoying the game a lot overall despite there being some tedious aspects)

I feel similarly. One of the biggest things for me is how, although much does feel like a Bethesda game, there were some times it felt like they'd just take stuff out of other games and dumped it in. The lack of vehicles annoyed me too, and don't get me started on the basically non existent local map

I could forgive bethesda games because I used to be able to look at them as "greater than the sum of its parts"

Fallout 4 with mods just barely got away with it.

Starfield has too many issues for me.

The biggest one, your second issue of loading screens, I don't think mods can fix. There just will never be a seamless overworld because of the spaceship mechanic.

Loading screens are really the biggest negative for me. And navigating the menus takes some time.

I really enjoyed Fallout 4. And it feels pretty close to that for me with MUCH better gunplay. I can feel this being a time sink for me once i can actually get my teeth sunk in to it.

I have a recommendation for running out of ammo and health packs: spend the time searching everything. There are boxes of ammo everywhere to the point that I've never gotten close to worrying about running out.

Yes, it's tedious, yes, it's probably not great gameplay to have to spend so much time searching rooms, but it helps you not run out of ammo.

The game mechanics and worldbuilding are underwhelming for what they were touting it as. Its going to take a few years to be good.

but question is cyberpunk actually good now?

the bullet sponge must be really bad if you're complaining about it after coming from Cyberpunk lmao

I red it takes like 12 hours for the game to get good. That's like two weeks for me. Some people have to work and limited time.

There's a 2 hour refund window. Bethesda misses it a tiny bit